


Expatriates

by Hope



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Crack Fic, Gen, minor characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-13
Updated: 2007-10-13
Packaged: 2017-10-01 23:50:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship (post-2.22).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Expatriates

**Author's Note:**

> For Nix.

*

Andy's pretty sure he's dead, because if he was high, he's sure he wouldn't be this fucking _bored_. He doesn't even sleep, man. Day and night, Cold Oak doesn't see a living freaking soul.

He's not sure where the others are. Not even sure what the shit happened, though he knows that Ava's dead too, and that gay chick. At least there'd been people around to bury her.

He only goes back into _that_ house when the bodies have decomposed enough to be unrecognizable.

Maybe this is what hell is; no people and no pot, just frigging Frontier Land in serious need of a queer eye ,and the only entertainment teaching himself to concentrate hard enough to pick shit up, make that motherfucking bell ping with the bits of rock he tosses at it.

No one hears the bell. One night he wonders how far out you can be and still hear it, and the next moment he's standing in the middle of the fucking woods, panicking, next second back again by his body, in that goddamn house, damp salt clotting its doors and windows. Shit, man. If there were even animals around in this shithole, at least they'd eat the remains, carry it off, do away with it somehow.

He doesn't know how long it's been when this trucker-guy shows up, an honest-to-god _alive_ trucker guy, who curses and holds his sleeve up over his nose and mouth when he finally, _finally_ stomps into the house where Andy's body is breaking up pitifully on the floor.

Trucker-guy can't hear or see Andy, no matter how much jumping around and shouting Andy's doing. He just goes on ahead and digs a hole out on the edge of town, where the ground is softer, closer to the woods than the hard-packed street. He drags the bodies out in a bundle of black plastic, tips the pieces into the hole and tosses streaks of gas into it like enthusiastic piss.

Trucker-guy lights a match and drops it, and Andy can't feel the subsequent wave of heat but he can see it, bending the air and making him feel weirdly queasy. He stands beside the trucker-guy and looks down, and when he looks up, through the warped sheets of hot air he can see another figure standing on the other side of the open grave.

It's another guy. Andy's pretty sure he's not one of the _honest-to-god-alive_ ones; certain of it when the guy reaches a hand into what must be the blazing heat of the fire, draws it back out with a joint, cherry glowing cheerily. The guy takes a drag, squints up at Andy.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Andy demands; inexplicably, weirdly possessive of this stupid little place and his stupid little funeral.

Trucker-guy speaks up from behind him, startling. "Burning the bodies," he says, and Andy turns back around to see trucker-guy's expression just as startled as Andy feels.

Andy blinks rapidly, steps up into trucker-guy's face. Trucker-guy is frowning, eyes not focused on what's right in front of him, of course. "Step back," Andy says, low and commanding, and trucker-guy looks even more confused as he steps unsteadily backwards.

"Shit, son." It's the other guy, who apparently trucker-guy can't see either; standing rightfuckingnext to Andy and speaking like his throat is full of smoke. "Anyone ever tell you your talent is sorely fuckin wasted in this--" he glances around, over his shoulder back toward the town then scanning briefly through the woods. "--shithole of a place?"

"Who the fuck are you?" Andy says, "and what the hell are you doing here?"

The guy holds up his hands, palm-out, as if to ward off Andy's (entirely justified) aggression. Andy resists the urge to grab for the joint, still smoking lazily between the guy's fingers. "Love me a good fire, man," the guy says, tilting his head down to where Andy's corpse is turning into brittle coals, lifting his hand to his mouth again. "Not to mention that smoke." He smirks around the joint, sucks on it. "Ash," he says.

Andy feels his brows tightening. "What?"

"And you're--" the guy takes another deep drag and the joint catches alight, blazing down to a stump in a sudden flare of blue flame. The guy flicks the butt away into nothingness, keeps his hand held out like his pointing finger's the barrel of a gun. "Andrew Gallagher. Deceased."

Andy's arms are up and hands clutching at his hair before he can even think about it. "What the fuck?" he says. "Who the hell are you, _death_? Some kind of fucked-up grim reaper? Shit--!" Andy jerks his arms back down again, holding them up in front of his face. The skin's gone rapidly gray, like it's deteriorated in a matter of moments, and what he's been avoiding in that house for what must have been weeks is right in front of him now: his own self, rotting away.

"Calm the fuck down, wouldya?" The other guy flicks his finger against Andy's temple and Andy can _feel_ it. The sickly flames licking up from he and Ava's bodies are dying down, now, and he can see the guy in front of him more clearly. He doesn't look like a fucking grim reaper. He looks someone's ill-considered attempt to revive the glory day's of mullet rock gone wrong; someone pissed in the petrie dish, making the result to skinny, too pasty. That hair, though… "I toldya. _Ash_."

"That some kinda…" Andy pauses, continues to be confused. "Stage name?"

"Shit, no," Ash laughs. "Man, we gotta get you the hell outta dodge."

Trucker-guy's been holding his baseball cap to his chest, but now he picks up his shovel again, starts filling the hole.

"How?"

Ash bobs his head a little, like an enthusiastic cockatiel. He cocks a thumb at the only living sole in the vicinity. "Hitch a ride."

"With trucker-guy?"

Ash frowns. "Dude," he says. "This is my man Bobby. He doesn't drive a truck."

"You know him?" Then, before Ash can answer, "he knows you're here?"

Ash sniggers briefly. "I sure as shit hope not." He eyes the rapidly filling pit. "And not you, either." He slings an arm around Andy's shoulders, starts to lead him toward the road out of town. "And it's best we keep it that way, huh? So go easy on that mind mojo."

At the end of the road, on the edge of town bordered by space more barren than the woods, sits a dusty, frankensteined Chevy. Andy can't help but feel a little disappointed. "So," he says, almost morosely. "I can't believe this is the afterlife. The _end_."

"Kid," Ash says, another joint flickering to light between his fingers-- "this is just the beginning,"--and shit, his fingers too, whole hand blazing as he holds it out. "Of a beautiful friendship."

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/55978.html


End file.
